Kevin Rose

"Digg has a very symbiotic relationship with the news media. Perhaps what we will provide organizations like newspapers is some insight into what the mass audience really wants to read about today, at least the online internet audience." - Kevin Rose

Kevin Rose is a tech geek and businessman who is best known as the founder of the ever-popular social bookmarking site Digg. He's a hero to tech enthusiasts and entrepreneurs alike.

MAGNETISM

With all this money in the bank, Kevin Rose certainly has the financial means to show the women in his life a good time, but like many other guys, the road to fame hasn't been without its relationship obstacles. When Kevin Rose was cohosting Tech TV's The Screen Savers, he moved in with his colleague Sarah Lane. Instead of using his savings toward a down payment, he spent them on developing Digg.com and Lane left him in the process. The two are on good terms now -- even working together.

Kevin Rose has continued to play the field. He was most recently linked to Julia Allison, a writer best known for her regular column in Time Out New York. Kevin Rose and Julia have broken things off, so at this point, he's basking in the joys of the single life.

SUCCESS

There's plenty to Digg about Kevin Rose's success. As the brains behind the elaborate news bookmarking site, he can take credit for the over 26 million visitors who come to Digg.com each month and the three million editors who maintain it. The incredible popularity of the site has done wonders for Kevin Rose's bank account. BusinessWeek claimed that he earned $60 million dollars in less than two years, and at just over 30 years old, he's just getting started.

Even before the creation of Digg, Kevin Rose proved that he had ample tech industry cred. He started as an employee with various dotcom companies, then served as the host of TechTV's The Screen Savers. Not only that, but Kevin Rose also found success in podcasting through his Revision3 projects. When it comes to trying new things in the tech sector, Kevin Rose has yet to fail.

Kevin Rose Biography

Kevin Rose was born on February 21, 1977, in California. He didn't spend very much of his childhood there, as he moved to Oregon before settling in Las Vegas. As a precocious youngster, Kevin Rose dabbled in computers, and his dad bought him a 386 computer at age 8. By the time he reached his teens, he was collecting software programs and developing ways for other users to download from him.

After attending Vo-Tech High School, Kevin Rose graduated and studied computer science at the University of Nevada, but he didn't graduate. Eager to get his feet wet in the tech craze of the late '90s, Kevin Rose left university in 1998 and seasoned his skills at tech jobs for various companies in the dot-com family. When the dot-com fever had eroded, so had Kevin Rose's job and it was time for him to start anew.

kevin rose joins techtv

After his work in the tech sector had dried up, Kevin Rose signed on to work as a production assistant for The Screen Savers, a TechTV show. Eventually, he showed up in brief segments on the air and, after gaining a positive response, Kevin Rose was promoted as the show's new cohost in March of 2004. After TechTV merged with the G4 channel, Kevin Rose relocated to California and saw the show evolve into the full-on multimedia variety show Attack of the Show!. He would continue hosting it until 2005.

While he was dabbling in television, Kevin Rose also became familiar with video podcasting. It started with his own series called thebroken in 2003, which netted more than two million downloads in year one. In time, Kevin Rose was confident that podcasting was a lucrative venture, and he cofounded the internet channel Revision3 along with a few of his former TechTV colleagues. Since then, Revision3 has been responsible for shows like Systm and This Week in Tech.

kevin rose creates digg.com

A lunch meeting with Steve Wozniak, the creator of Apple, led Kevin Rose to his biggest success yet. They had become friends thanks to their mutual tech interests and Steve Wozniak's occasional appearances on TechTV. The meeting inspired Kevin Rose to start Digg.com, a website that would serve as a portal for the most popular news articles from around the world wide web. The concept was a risky one, and near the end of his run with Attack of the Show, Kevin Rose used his savings to design the site, and buy the domain name and the hardware necessary to launch the site with three of his colleagues.

In the four years since the launch of the site, Digg.com has evolved from an experiment into a well-oiled web machine. Reportedly 236 million people visit the site every year, and Digg.com has increased its community vibe by offering friends lists for subscribers. Kevin Rose has created a popular accompanying podcast, Diggnation, and he's spearheading efforts to give Digg website visitors social-networking abilities as well. With bids to buy Digg.com coming in at nearly $200 million dollars, Kevin Rose is on the verge of adding to his fortune, but he's equally happy to reap the intangible benefits of watching his simple idea fly into the stratosphere.

In 2008, he was nominated for AM's Top 49 Men of 2008 -- vote for him here.